Monday, April 27, 2009

This having a kid thing is finally starting to pay off

I know some of you out there are completely anti-kid. And I must concede that in theory you have a point.

Who needs the staying up all night taking care of a hungry screaming baby. Or the added expenses of childcare and tiny socks and booster seats for cars and special biohazard trashcans designed for radioactive diapers.

But I can tell you that after a few years, these things start to pay dividends as you begin to reap the reward for all of the time you spent on the rigorous child training program.

For example, our kindergarten-age kid is becoming a convenient time-saving device for me. About a week ago I taught her how to make me my morning cup of coffee.

Since I'm the only coffee drinker in the family, I have one of those single serving coffee makers from Senseo (that I got virtually for free). And using a Senseo is so easy a child can do it -- which is kind of the point here.

So I walked the kid through all of the coffee making steps. I showed her where the coffee pods are kept in the upper cupboard and how to avoid being impaled on the rack of steak knives while climbing onto the counter to retrieve the pods.

I showed her how to fill the water reservoir on the coffee maker with scalding hot water from the kitchen sink.

I showed her how to place the pods in the coffee maker and clamp down the locking lid, how to press the appropriate buttons and set the coffee mug under the steaming streams of coffee, and how to carefully carry the mug of hot java to me without burning her fingers.

So for the last few mornings, I've had a nice hot cup of coffee ready for me when I get to the kitchen.

I also enjoyed sweeping/skimming the pool with the net when dad showed me how, too.

I even thought it was cool to pick up snales from the garden, because for that job, dad gave us a nickel for each snale we'd bag. (He promised a quarter for slugs, but that wasn't happening...)

But when mom tried to make laundry some sort of "fun" addition to the list of tasks, I was on to her game. Plus, she waited too long, and didn't show us how to do our laundry until we were about 12. It went over like a ton of bricks. So remember to show your kid how to do laundry just as soon as she can reach the controls on the machines, mkay? Save yourself some heartache and whining...